Will the Pope Make the Crisis Worse?

A consensus is growing that gay priests are the problem, and that they should be screened from seminaries

This article originally appeared on Beliefnet in March 2002.

As America's eight stunned and chastened cardinals meet with Pope John Paul II this week, a consensus already appears to be growing among church leadership about the roots of the problem. According to several recent statements, the problem is not celibacy, secrecy or ordination of women. It is homosexuality among clergy.

"Homosexual students were allowed to pass through seminaries. Grave mistake," said Monsignor Eugene Clark, Cardinal Edward Egan's stand-in at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday. "It is a disorder and...should prevent a person from being ordained." In March, Vatican spokesman Joachim Navarro-Valls said ''people with these inclinations just cannot be ordained.'' Last week, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the influential conservative journal "First Things," said that most of the priest sexual abuse cases involve men having sex with teenage boys and young men. "We call that a homosexual relationship."

And the Pope's statement on Tuesday seemed reaffirm the traditional Church view. "[People] must know that bishops and priests are totally committed to the fullness of Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality, a truth as essential to the renewal of the priesthood and the episcopate as it is to the renewal of marriage and family life." Earlier in the week, he pointedly ruled out discussion of celibacy as an issue but said there may well be a problem with seminaries. "Seminary formation is very important, for the convictions and practical training imparted to future priests are essential for the success of the church's mission," he said in a statement. For the most part, when church leaders talk about reforming the seminaries they are talking about the need to screen out priests with sexual problems.

The problem is that the solutions being discussed--screening out gays--could well make matters worse.

Before one understands the perils of this solution, it's important to test the premise. Is the Catholic clergy increasingly gay? Apparently the answer is yes. No statistics are truly reliable, but several studies have been done over the years that place the figure at between 10 and 50% of the priesthood. The most reliable statistic is believed to come from a study by A.W. Richard Sipe, in his 1995 book "Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis," who writes that 30% of priests have a homosexual orientation, far higher than the percentage in the overall populations.

"At issue at the beginning of the 21st century is the growing perception, one seldom contested by those who know the priesthood well, that the priesthood is, or is becoming, a gay profession,'' writes the Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, then rector of a Catholic seminary in Ohio, in ''The Changing Face of the Priesthood,'' a book published in 2000.

"You should hear gay priests joke," says Linda Pieczynski, spokeswoman for the liberal Catholic group Call to Action. "They say that when they go to the local gay bar it looks like a chancery meeting."

But what's the connection between homosexuality and pedophilia?

An increasing number of sociologists have concluded that many of the abusive priests prey on adolescents--not children--and that these priests often are homosexual men with stunted sexual development. Often, they are men who entered the seminary in high school, before they were truly aware of their sexuality. Sometimes, they are men running from homosexual tendencies. In either case, they are attracted to the environment of the priesthood because it is a place where they can be with other men.

Former priest Eugene Kennedy studied the issue for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Often, their sexual feelings only asserted themselves after they had entered parish work," he wrote. "They were dismayed and puzzled by a erotic attractions to boys that reflected their own pre-adolescent state."

This tendency to attract gay men--and more important, at least some gay men with confused sexuality--then combines with another fact: the church officially views homosexuality as a disorder. This makes it quite difficult for gay men who might begin to wrestle with incipient homosexual feelings to talk them through in a constructive way.